When Have You Finished Learning a Piece of Music?
What’s the Purpose? 🤷🏻♂️
Throughout the last 15 years of teaching piano I have regularly come across two distinctly different types of player; the player that will commit to a piece of music until they have played it to death...and the player that can’t commit to learning a piece of music at all and wants to move on to something new every week.
No doubt if you are a piano learner, you can identify with one of these two categories! If not…then you might be the types of player that want to perfect every piece, but also can’t commit to them and so end up learning 200 pieces of music at a time.
But when is the right time to actually put a piece of music away and move on to something new? Well..as with anything that I write about in these articles, there is a little more to consider than you might think!
2. Goal or No Goal 🥅
For those players that like to work towards exams, there is an inbuilt deadline in which you need to have learnt the pieces to the best of your ability. After an exam, even if it wasn’t played 100% perfectly…it’s rare that a student caries on learning the pieces of music. The reason for this is because of the purpose of learning these pieces. In this case, the reason for learning the music is to learn new techniques, theory, terms and symbols in the music and then to demonstrate the learning at the end of this process. So continuing to learn the music beyond the exam isn’t likely to help you improve as much as a new piece would.
This is actually also the case for those players that are learning for a performance, such as most professional players. The natural deadline marks the end of a learning block and the start of a new learning block.
However, there are also many players that aren’t working to deadlines and play with the hopes of seeing general improvement. For those players, it’s a little more challenging to work out. If you are learning in a more “traditional” way (learning by sheet music and learning pieces of progressive difficulty) then I would recommend either working in blocks (learn 3 new pieces every 12 weeks) and self-imposing deadlines, or learning when it is a better use of your time to start something new!
Providing a piece of music is of the right difficulty, there are several things I look for when determining if it is more useful for a student to move onto a new piece:
1. If they understand all of the notes, symbols and performance markings that are written into the music.
2. They are able to somewhat confidently negotiate the technical difficulties within the piece.
3. They are able to play with an emphasis on musicality rather than the notes.
4. If they are getting bored of learning a piece of music or don’t like it!
If you are self taught and selecting your own pieces of music, sometimes a piece might not be at the best level for you…but that certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a go if you are really excited about the piece. However, if a piece is a big leap then you could learn it over a longer time frame while learning easier pieces and switching those out more regularly. Alternatively, you could learn a section of the piece so that the new notes, symbols, performance markings and technical difficulties are more manageable.
3. The 95% Rule ✅
No matter how well you learn a piece of music, it is very very difficult (if not impossible) to perform it exactly how you want to from start to finish. This is why a performance of a piece of music is not a good measure as to whether you should move on or not. Whereas, your understanding of the music and your ability to work through the technical challenges of a piece is!
This is why (if you are the type of person that wants to perform a piece of music well before moving on) I would suggest implementing a 95% rule. If you can perform a piece of music to 95% of your capabilities then that is a good day at the office!
Remember that learning a new piece of music with a whole new set of challenges is often going to be more effective for learning than spending a large amount of time on the last 5% of a piece. As you improve, the pieces that once caused you trouble will look easy in comparison and you will make up that extra 5% through other pieces. This is why grade 8 players will be able to tackle a grade 4-5 piece with ease and perform it with far fewer mistakes.
Matthew Cawood
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